People who Know How to Laugh and Cry at the Same Time

I have not written to you for a long time, since it seems I would have written more of the same, again and again.

About the rotten fruits of the occupation.

Yet, sometimes things happen whichare the little that holds much.

My daughter Reut lives in South Mount Hebron (within the green line of course). The distance between her home and villages in the occupied area of the region is 5-10 minutes ride by car and half an hour by donkey. Even walking doesn’t take that long. Some of my friends from the villages are also good friends of hers as she sometimes joins us in our weekly visits.

Yet, short as this distance is, only she can visit them but they cannot visit her, since there are check points between them.

Some days ago Reut became a mother for the second time and I called my friends to tell them about it. When I told Eid from Umm al-Kheir, he said: “Thank you for sharing. You know,” he added, “what I want to do the most now is to come to Reut and hug you both. But I can’t.”

Silence was between us for a long while.

When I could talk again, I said: “You know Eid, what you’ve said was not a political declaration, nor a bloody event, nor murder or evacuation, not a demolition or any kind of revenge action, and so on. And yet, the pain I’ve felt for all of those (which happen every day) is folded within it.

Silence again. “Yes,” he said. We understand and feel alike.

A day later, exactly the same conversation took place between me and Nasser from Susiya.

Comments

Do you say to your occupied friends that the problem here is the Jewish state as a Jewish state: that the price of normalization is secularization, civil rights, minority status for Jews? Are you ready to be in the smaller clan in the two-clan tribe?

My husband and I are coming to visit Palestine soon and have been really touched by your work. We will be visiting Jordan valley solidarity group and, last year, Fathy told us about you. Can we meet somewhere??? I don’t want to give more detail at the moment!! In peace, Jan